President Scudder Huckabee?After seeing that presidential candidate meme put Huckabee near the top of my list, I felt unclean. For the record: I will never vote for that man. Luckily charlesks chimed in with a timely pointer to a post by a favorite author--both mine and Pam's--e_moon60. In it, she raises the cogent objection that one cannot both claim that "God's will" invalidates elements of the consitution and simultaneously swear to support and defend it. On another note, I hadn't even known that Elizabeth Moon had a blog until today.

Here's my reply to her:

Good day, Ms. Moon! I believe you've corresponded with my wife, prettypammie on an SFF horse newsgroup. I think this is the first time I've chimed in directly to you. [Gah...I feel like such a fanboy now: "Hi! I'm Pete! Long-time reader; first-time poster!" Okay. I'm over it.]

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who, on learning first that Huckabee was on the rise in the polls, and second that he is an evangelical christian, thought immediately of If This Goes On, and the Theocratic period of Heinlein's Future History. In fact, a quick search of the web suggests that I amnotalone in noting the parallels.

I have loved Heinlein since I was a kid. I am always fascinated by how many of his speculative inventions and ideas have become reality. This is one instance, though, where I dearly hope that his stories can serve as warning instead of foresight.

Yep- I had results like yours, and thought the same thing.Huckabee makes me VERY nervous, and he will not get my vote.

But people forget what puts Scudder and his ilk in power- polarization and the ever widening gulf betwixt the two sides.Not the polititicans, mind you, but the baseline 'conservative' and the baseline 'liberal'.

They've gotten so far apart that we get ever wider swings of the pendulum as one side gets out the vote, then the other...Scudder's not inevitable, but unless we get to bringin' those edges back in, he's damn likely.

According to RAH, one of the reasons behind Scudder's election was voter apathy; only a small proportion of those eligible to vote even bothered to register, so Scudder could gain the White House with far less than majority support.

You are decidedly not alone on this one. Ever since I started reading about him and his agenda, my inner uh-oh has been going off big time, and I have actually called the man Scudder a time or three thousand.